RECLAIM MY HEART(24)

“This is where you beat that Veronica girl?” Zach called.
While she’d been lost in thought, he’d made his way over to the track. She got up, snagged her purse strap, and went to the white starting line.
“Yep. Right here.” She tucked her purse under her elbow. “But it wasn’t paved or painted back then. It was covered in some kind of loose, gritty gray stuff. Covered your shoes with dust and turned your socks the color of lead.” She tapped the bottom of her sandal against the tartan surface. “This is nice.” The silence that splayed over them was uncomfortable, like a scratchy wool blanket on a hot night. Tyne wanted to shove it off her as quick as possible. “You could talk to him, you know. Talk to him about it.”
Zach just looked at her.
“About what to call him, I mean.”
She held her breath, uncertain if what she’d said would touch off his teenaged short fuse.
Finally, he only nodded, turning to glance up toward the school building that sat up on a small rise. “You guys go to dances and stuff like that?”
Her smile was lopsided, her attempt at humor failing. “Are you kidding? No way. We didn’t go in for that kind of stuff.”
Once they’d become friends, they avoided fellow classmates. After they’d started dating, they were careful not to be seen in public together. Dances, any school functions, really, were out of the question. Tensions grew quickly in mixed crowds.
“Sounds like you two were pretty boring.”
The burst of laughter that shot from her w Kot >
After a moment or two, Zach must have realized that was all she was going to offer. He ran up the first three steps of the bleachers and back down again. “So what’s next? I know you said there wasn’t much here, but if this is where you grew up, there has to be more to see, right?”
They piled into the car and Tyne drove him to the river, the steep road snaking downward to the rocky bank. The wide open view was spectacular, full of cool, lush greenery and churning water. And she spent an hour teaching him to skip stones across the surface of the river. He caught on pretty quickly and seemed to understand the need to search for smooth, flat rocks without having to be told.
“You’re a natural,” she told him when he’d made a rock skip several times before it plunked beneath the surface.
He scanned the ground for another stone and when he found one, he smoothed his thumb across it. “This is a really big river.”
“The Susquehanna is the largest river on the Eastern Shore. When I was in school, some of the kids tried to convince me that the name meant ‘mile wide and foot deep,’ and I even saw that listed in a visitor’s brochure.” She released a stone and it ker-plopped without making a single skip. “But Jasper told me it’s an Algonquian word that means ‘muddy current.’”
“Uncle Jasper’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”
She nodded. It seemed there was more her son wanted to say, but he only flung the stone he’d found and grinned when it hopped too many times to count.
“Show off.” She laughed.
“I’m thirsty,” he told her, dusting his palms on his shorts. “Can we stop someplace for a soda?”
They headed back to the car and when she jabbed the key into the ignition, she asked, “Are you hungry?”
Zach shook his head. “Nah. Not yet. Just thirsty.”
They made their way to a convenience mart on the outskirts of town. Tyne had successfully evaded Main Street and the town square up until then. Zach hadn’t asked about her childhood home, and she had no idea what she’d say or do if he did.
The store shelves were only chest-high, so she could see her son standing at the glass door of a refrigerated section of teas, sodas, and juices. She’d brought him out today to talk about his anger toward her, but she had no idea how to broach the subject without just coming right out with it. It felt awkward, and because she couldn’t begin to guess how he might react, she hadn’t even tried to raise the subject.
Having paid for her bottle of water and his peach Snapple, she headed out the door. Zach paused by the stack of newspapers sitting by the door.
“Hey, Mom—” he jogged across the parking lot after her “—look at this.”
She stopped at the driver’s side door, her hand on the latch.
“The town paper. It’s okay. I didn’t steal it. Says right here it’s free. But look.”
Tyne slid behind the steering wheel and Zach got in beside her.
“It’s an article about the Mayor.” Excitement sparked his tone as he read, “’Mayor Richard Whitlock cut the ribbon of the Sheer Elegance Hair Salon on Third Avenue this past Saturday.’ How cool is that? The Mayor has our last name. You know him?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Time. It’s what she was in desperate need of. Time for her heart to stop pounding. Time to figure out what the hell to tell her son. She uns Not > n’crewed the top of her bottle of water and tipped it up for a very long drink.
“Wow,” she said at last, swiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “That’s cold. And delicious. Just what I needed. I was thirstier than I realized. How’s your tea?” Misdirection failure. Even as she asked the question, she knew he wasn’t going to fall for it.
The bottle sat, unopened, where her son had tucked it between his thighs. Zach was too busy staring at the paper.
“Do you know this guy?”
His expression was curious, so guileless, in fact, that she was forced to look away. Her first instinct was to lie. Brazenly. But she couldn’t. She respected her son too much to do that.